Happiness

[PaxMondo]

Struggling with pop/worker/militia happiness. starts out good, but then start to get events and falls apart. any insights into controlling this other than spending credits?

[demiare]

Militia will be disbanded unavoidable. You can't do anything with it (well, I not tried to burn a lot of stratagems for it) and really don't want to stop them from disappearing as they're too weak.
Soldiers will be happy if their wages are at least ~equal to worker ones, you don't suffer huge losses or massive logistical shortage (especially leading to starvation).
Population happiness is easiest thing as you could simply buy it. Meritocracy commerce buildings helping here too.
Worker happiness... Seems you can't deal with it. Penalties for QOL are too crazy, especially because QOL level is advancing with delay, while penalties are not. I'm not tried "government" yet, maybe with it bonuses you will be able to deal with worker happiness in end-game. A bit helping to keep civilian economy wages low - you need to have much more population then vacancies in civilian economy, but it's limiting your development.
It's a very painful as usual solutions for worker strikes events are autocratic and democratic, meritocracy one is rare and insanely hard (using social skills that not developed by governor). Especially annoying is colonization past early game. It's hilarious and stupid, as you either eat tons of worker strikes events until QOL slowly advance (ofk you need to build public QOL buildings) or dump tons of stratagems to keep it in line. Don't fit post-apocalypse setting at all - it's much BETTER to keep your civilization level as low as possible then raise it, lol.

[ramnblam]

Worker happiness isn't too bad, build the QOL buildings and pay them more in the backwater shit holes to offset the malus. There are also various stratagems you can play to improve worker happiness. Keep an appropriate garrison to deal with strikes or pay them off.

[demiare]

ORIGINAL: ramnblam
build the QOL buildings

Partial solution. Building output is changing QOL slowly so it's very easy to raise your civilization level by generating too much QOL. And each civilization level making a problem with worker happiness MUCH worse. It isn't a big problem when CL 3-4, but it IS a big problem when it's >6.

ORIGINAL: ramnblam
Keep an appropriate garrison to deal with strikes or pay them off.

^This is exactly what I wrote - if you don't want autocracy or democracy points then worker happiness is annoying. [:)] Worker Privileges stratagem from Meritocracy-50 is helping but it's IMHO too rare. I tried several times to do mass colonization with Meritocratic government and it's suck, especially in late game.

[ramnblam]

demi when are you going to look after your citizens? You didn't even want to feed them in the other thread

[demiare]

Well at first I don't have any other option but Meritocracy. Democracy isn't suited to deal with critical situations (history or TV about current situation with economics&pandemic in EU&US). Plus I really don't like their in-game bonuses too. Autocracy is struck hard by developer political biases (it's only political move lacking passive bonuses at all - unjust and unfair). [:D]

Secondly I'm for fair and equal approach. If we have common event that have Aut/Demo option - for me it's completely unfair that it's lacking Meritocracy option. Same unfairness happen with "unit XXX have a promising soldier" event - you have no other choice but agree and take ethic shift. Seriously? I'm in charge - why I could refuse to waste limited funds on special training for that unit?!

I'm understand that dev want us to deal with sudden ethic shift but IMHO they should be done in a realistic way - some sudden politic move demand X or you will deal with unrest/danger/fear/etc... Current model is look extremely artificial for me. Seriously. Is anybody care what special training is used in battalion X?!

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

Struggling with pop/worker/militia happiness. starts out good, but then start to get events and falls apart. any insights into controlling this other than spending credits?

It had me stumped for a while too. I think I finally got a handle on it.
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4830533

Just be carefull of the advise to increae the QOL. Unless you fix an actuall penalty from poor QOL, all you do is increase the Civilisation score and get a short time increase.

[Twotribes]

I have played a game of Robinson cuirso to figure this out, Build government buildings.

[gmsitton]

Don't upgrade your town level until you have to. I believe high combat losses decrease population happiness.

[demiare]

ORIGINAL: gmsitton

Don't upgrade your town level until you have to.

I'm doing exactly opposite to delay civilization level growth as long as possible.